I'm a big Ansel Fan. Owned 4 by 5 field camera. Read all his books, applied the zone system and try to document that and all the darkroom procedures regarding processing times for various films and papers. Was that man ever meticulous. Went to his show in Toronto several years ago and there was a poster sized original of Moonrise. I asked if they would take a a check and the response was it is priceless.

In January of 2015 we went to Hernandez and found the church. It was hard to find. Too bad that there is no marker of any kind to show where one of his most famous shots was taken. Very cool experience both for my wife and I.

alright12 wrote in post #18459027I'm not a fan of post-processing, but I think it is not in any way cheating as you are just compensating for what your camera cannot do.

I don't see it that way. It is not compensating for what the camera can't do at all. The exposure is just the first step in the process, and I will always try to optimise the exposure to produce the perfect starting point for the next stage, processing the exposure to produce the optimum file or negative for the final stage of producing useable output, be that a finished JPEG file for viewing on a screen, or the perfect print. At each stage you are looking to produce the best possible starting point for the next stage in the process. It really helps of course if you have all of the steps there in your head before you even pick up the camera.

Remember that it has never been possible, and I doubt very much if it will ever be possible to create a photographic image without some degree of processing after the command to capture the image has been given. In the analogue age you had the option to do all the processing yourself, or you could drop the fim in to some place that would do it for you. In the current digital age the same still applies, although you now actually get a little choice in the automated process. By choosing the Picture Style, in a Canon DSLR, along with the other adjustable parameters, you are in fact controlling your post processing. The major difference is that those decisions are being made in advance, and often without too much consideration of the overall results. I'm sure many, or probably the majority of camera owners/users never change any of the cameras processing parameters from the factory defaults.

Actually when you dropped off a roll of film at a lab there is a person, or possibly an automated system that will check the negative and adjust the printing stage for you to try to get you the best results from the exposure that you made. That is the one step that you seem to lose with digital imaging straight from the camera, using the preset settings, when the resulting JPEG file is expected to be the final product.

So just remember that to get any image out of a camera pretty much requires a set minimum amount of post exposure processing. All that varies is the amount of control that the photographer exerts over that process.

BigAl007 wrote in post #18459507Remember that it has never been possible, and I doubt very much if it will ever be possible to create a photographic image without some degree of processing after the command to capture the image has been given. In the analogue age you had the option to do all the processing yourself, or you could drop the fim in to some place that would do it for you.

There's always an exception to every rule.....

Polaroid

5DIII, 40D, 16-35L 35 ART 50 ART 100L macro, 24-70 L Mk2, 135L 200L 70-200L f4 ISHype chimping - The act of looking at your screen after every shot, then wildly behaving like it's the best picture in the world, to try and impress other photographers around you.

welshwizard1971 wrote in post #18459538There's always an exception to every rule.....

Polaroid

Ah, but if you remember, there is a lot of post exposure manipulation you could do to a polaroid before the image set in. Those few minutes when the emulsion was soft it could be manipulated with any hard or stiff object. Spoons were popular as were pencils, pen caps (the Bic stick type), coins, finger nails, etc.

BigAl007 wrote in post #18459507I don't see it that way. It is not compensating for what the camera can't do at all. The exposure is just the first step in the process, and I will always try to optimise the exposure to produce the perfect starting point for the next stage, processing the exposure to produce the optimum file or negative for the final stage of producing useable output, be that a finished JPEG file for viewing on a screen, or the perfect print. [...]

But there is a lot of compensation for what a camera can't do. For instance, a camera cannot capture the same dynamic range our eyes can see in high contrast situations. There is post processing to compensate for that. The camera does not have the same low light capabilities our eyes have. There is post processing compensation for that. The camera doesn't have the same ability to capture saturation of color in high contrast situations or when there is heavy atmospheric influences. There is post processing compensation for that as well. That's not even getting into more technical aspects of photography where the camera is set up to push beyond our eye's capabilities. Infrared and ultraviolet photography requires post processing. If we want to get even further out from our consumer products, there are x-ray cameras, gamma camera (aka y-camera or anger camera), temperature sensing cameras, spatial mapping and sensing cameras, and who knows what else that's available now or the near future.

Then there is the question of the ability of the photographer. Someone who nails an exposure every single time may not need to correct for a bad exposure in post. I'm not that good and I occasionally need help correcting minor exposure differences, specially when shooting events and the action is happening faster than I can compensate for. There is no redo in those situations and correcting for human error is a must. Is that cheating? Not everyone has the luxury of taking their time, experimenting with the scene and fine tuning (throwing away) exposures until it's perfect in camera.

The issue with (standard) photography is that the resulting images are compared to what our eyes can see. Sadly there are yet no cameras that can fully reproduce what we see. Shallow field of focus is one example of how we have come to terms and accepted a limitation of the camera. So much so that it has become an affect that is manipulated for artistic reasons. Long focal lengths, on the other hand, is an example of how the camera has overcome a limitation of the eye.

As mentioned earlier by several people, this will forever be a question with no singular answer. Photography spans too many disciplines and are used for too many things to have one single answer. A photojournalist has one set of criteria while a landscape photographer has another. A commercial photographer will have a third set of criteria while the cellphone blogger will have a fourth and we're not even touching in astrophotography, cellular photography, scientific photography, geological photography, satellite photography and all those countless specialty fields.

HogansHeroes wrote in post #18459630Not at all cheating,Photography is a form of art. Take a photo and do something special with it is not at all cheating its Artistic.

Not all photography is art, as I stated above. Then there are levels of artistic license too. A photojournalist can't do something special with it and get away with it. Neither can an x-ray technician and they are both photographers.

I was a member at an online photo contest for several years. Digital Image Cafe. I was a judge for a month once a year. There were several categories and one was digital art. For the other categories the rules (that were strict) stated that some editing was permitted but it had to look like natural. So stuff like curves, levels, some local editing. HDR was just becoming popular but you could easily tell if it was overcooked.

Digital art was a free for all. Surreal images that some spent hours creating. They were obvious wild manipulations.

As some have stated we see in more dynamic range than our cameras. Our eyes look at a landscape for several seconds and adjust. The curtains open in less than a second. So like I said I have never seen any issues with some basic edits to boost DR, colours adjustments, etc. I also took a few PS courses and one instructor said if you do anything at least use levels. We learned how to adjust the black and white points individually.

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